Archive for grindcore

I’m not an alcoholic, although it’s probably fair to say that from time to time have had a relationship to alcohol that was not entirely healthy. I mention this because I’ve been told in such a way as to believe it that one characteristic of alcoholics is that they’re always chasing after the high that they get from the first drink. I certainly can relate. That first beer tends to go down awful smooth, and then for the rest of the evening I’m wishing I could find the level of enjoyment that I got at the very beginning.

My relationship to grindcore maps on to this. I’ve been listening to exemplars of this kind of music for a lot of years. And I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it. From Napalm Death, to Repulsion, to Brutal Truth, and lots of more obscure acts than that. But for me the truly defining instance of grindcore is Terrorizer. I can still remember hearing the opening bars of “After World Obliteration” and being absolutely stunned. Admittedly I actually heard World Downfall after some of the others. I’d heard Mentally Murdered, From Enslavement to Obliteration, and Horrified (just to name a few) months before I heard Terrorizer, and (for what tiny amount this is worth) I actually saw Napalm Death a few times in 1986 (at which point they were doing like 30 songs in fifteen minutes). But World Downfall is the disc that defines the genre for me.

I have to admit that I got something like the old feeling the first time I cranked up Cárcava, the new disc from veteran Spanish grinders Nashgul. Which is not to say that this sounds a great deal like Terrorizer (as you might expect from my natterings in the preceding two paragraphs), but this record does have a lot of similar qualities. The guitars sound like someone tearing a piece of sheetmetal apart. Although downtuned pretty considerably, they are still crisp enough for one to actually hear what’s going. The singer kind of sounds like he’s gargling thumbtacks, very much as you’d expect, but he’s actually coherent enough that I might actually be able to understand at least some of what he’s saying (if it weren’t’ for the fact that it’s all in Spanish). Most importantly, they use the blast beat judiciously, employing it for emphasis but not getting married to it. This gives the music a varied quality that goes a long way to keeping one interested.

This is their first full length in seven years or so. In the meantime they’ve done a few ep’s and splits, including one with War Master that was quite good, although they only released a couple of hundred copies. But one thing you will notice if you go back and listen to El Día Después Al Fin De La Humanidad that there is a common (and very high) quality across the two recordings. Lot’s of this stuff it available on Bandcamp, so you should probably go ahead and get it there, if for no other reason that the incomparable joy of instant gratification.

Ok, pretty much any band with a Tolkien reference in the name will get me to listen at least once, but I must say that I was pretty stoked to find this release. All too often bands in this genre just go through sort of formulaic progression. Obviously, the thing that defines the genre is, to some extent at least, adherence to some sort of formula. But these guys execute their thing with serious aggression, but also enough variation from the norm to make this a really enjoyable disc.